Recruiter claims that 3,000 financial services jobs were created in London last month. 2,550 were in the back and middle office
Is it getting harder and harder to achieve a front office job in investment banking? It looks like it.
Superficially cheering new figures from recruitment firm Astbury Marsden suggest 3,000 financial services jobs were created in London in August. This was despite it being August, despite it being the Olympics and despite banks seemingly needing to make more redundancies.
Less superficially, things weren't so wonderful - especially if you were looking for a job in the front office.
Astbury Marsden's figures are based on Astbury Marsden's own business. It estimates that it has around 10% of the market and says it was given 300 jobs to fill last month. Astbury Marsden CEO John Nicholson explains that the "vast majority" (probably around 85%) of those jobs were in the back and middle office. 35% of them were contract roles.
At worst, this suggests there were only 280 front office investment banking jobs advertised in London in August. It also suggest that middle and back office vacancies now outnumber front office vacancies by a ratio of 7:1.
Are things really that bad? Our own figures confirm that accounting/finance, IT and risk are by far the biggest areas of recruitment. Right now, we're advertising 1,476 jobs in these sectors. By comparison, 493 jobs are being advertised in capital markets, trading and investment banking/M&A....
